Ordering Teas from AliExpress

Has anyone ordered teas directly from China through AliExpress or Ebay? I’ve placed small orders twice and am not comfortable with the entire exchange because of price/quality concerns. What have your experiences been thus far?

I have…what should concern you the most (if you are in Europe) is the very strict regulations when it comes to pesticides. If these % exceed the max. your tea will will never make it inside. (tea from Japan/China)

experiences with green tea better than with black tea (received some awful blended ’’ darjeeling" that went almost straight into the bin …)

some on ebay/aliexpres are o.k and/or excellent, but some players simply sell garbage or say it’s a Ceylon or Darjeeling, when, in fact, it is not.

I guess it’s on a hit or miss basis . … ( found some great sellers on the German ebay site though that I now and then use..

I’ve ordered on both and for the most part I’ve had good experiences. I’ve only bought Chinese teas, during these transactions. What I have noticed is that there can be a wide distribution of cost for the same teas on aliexpress and it’s worth doing some searches for price comparisons. I have a few rules for the most part. I usually only buy from buyers who are able to answer my questions about the teas clearly and competently. If they seem to have a formula answer that has little or nothing to do with the tea in question I won’t buy. If they have a taobao site it’s often worth going to as the information is often more accessible there ( if you have a translator) and the reviews are often more honest. On aliexpress usually anything under 5 stars suggest there was some problem with the transaction. So far the teas I’ve received have been of the quality I’ve expected based on the pictures and the information available and many of them have been very nice.

So far I’ve I have had two orders cancelled, one was because the item was out of stock ( the main business of this company is wholesale not retail). The second was because the store owner had a warehouse fire and lost all of their stock.

The nice thing with aliexpress are that the funds are held back on aliexpress until you confirm that you have received and are happy with the item. In case of cancellations before the product is sent your money is returned within a few days of the cancellation.

This experience has allowed me to try teas that are not available in Canada, and so far I’ve enjoyed the experience.

I too would like to know of reputable tea vendors. The horror stories I’ve been reading about Aliexpress kept me up at night until I finally got my order of green tea powder. Would I get what I wanted? What if they sent me chalk instead of tea powder? Even with the diamond ratings, I was sceptical, because I heard reviews could be faked, and most of the 5-star reviews I’d see were just “Excellent” with no useful comments (and so seemed fake).

Even when I’d gotten it, a mislabelling of the package (HK post said it was 200g rather than the 400g I ordered) drove me to paranoidly weigh it on my mom’s laboratory balancing scale several times, and took the bags to the grocery and asked to use their digital scale, before I was finally satisfied that yes, I did get what I ordered. Good tea, too. Just posted a note on it yesterday.

I guess I just want to know of good sellers who sell the real deal, and good stuff. So that I can sleep soundly at night while my tea is shipped.

Nofur to be quite honest I’ve had mostly good experiences on Aliexpress. I have had a few orders that weren’t shipped for various reasons, a warehouse fire, lack of stock from supplier, etc and for the most part the orders were efficiently cancelled awne I was refunded. I’ve only had one problem for a very small order where the supplier said they shipped the order with ref number and all and then told me that it hadn’t been shipped and was out of stock and then tried to offer me replacements that were either older tea or not of the same quality. I declined and she said she would refund me privately. This one has not quite been resolved and if she fails to live up to her premisses I will have to open a dispute to get a refund. However not a lot of money is involved in this one. I take the feedback with a grain of salt, all a large number of positive ratings means is that they have successfully completed a lot of orders where the buyer was more or less satisfied 5* in Aliexpress does not mean the tea is amazing. It is geared towards the level of service. I have bought from sellers with little or even no sales history with no problems and found great tea and good bargains. A lot of sellers do not specialise in tea but may have 100s of tea listings ( these often resell from other distributors or will have the product sent directly from the tea factory.

Thanks, guys! And well, I’m just starting out, so I’m not sure what to pick from all the many types. I’m already working out to try a couple of Garret’s puerhs, though.

That said, there are some names that keep cropping up in references like Tieguanyin and Dragon Well… White Tea sounds pretty interesting too. I really have no idea, though… There anything you guys could recommend to a newbie?